7 Tips to Increase Productivity as a Remote Worker

Working remotely is no longer an unknown term. Many of the leading world’s companies have already adopted the idea of remote workers, and will happily accept new submissions through their job application forms, FlexJobs has been kind enough to put together a list of such companies (here is another good one), and we strongly recommend to look into the comments for that particular resource as well, as there are many more insights and remote work companies to be learned about.

We at CodeCondo acknowledge the importance of remote workers and how they shape the web around us, some of our past content has been very closely tied with remote workers in mind, including a number of agile developer tools for people who work from remote locations, we looked into leading sites that offer UX jobs (many of which are remote), and one of our resident writers put together a great list post that looked at the leading freelance job sites, all of which are heaven for remote job seekers.

1. Email wisely

Email is always going to be the number one distraction. It’s a habit that builds over time, and can often interfere with your overall work performance. It’s especially easy to be distracted by email when there is no one looking over our shoulder, and depending on the job that we’re holding, we might assume that we’re getting more done by being actively involved with writing emails.

Make an agreement with yourself that you will check emails only when you have the time to read and respond back to them, because there’s a huge difference between answering emails all day, and answering them at a specific time. By limiting yourself to a set time, you will see a significant increase in focus, and thus productivity.

2. Teamwork

Just because we are sitting all alone at our home office, doing work for a company that’s located thousands of miles away from where we are, does not mean that we should ignore one of the most essential aspects of any type of work — communication!

Buffer is a company that’s know for being both transparent and also open to remote workers, and they have went into great detail in their blog posts about what it takes to have a remote team, as well as how important it is to keep everyone up to date; although this should be arranged either by a team manager, or the CEO of the company itself.

3. Working schedule

A remote job doesn’t usually rely on the typical 9 to 5 type of work schedule. You’re bound to create a schedule that suits your daily needs, but you should never forget that even though you’re doing remote work, you’re still paid for getting things done, and feeling to free with your time can put a big dent in the number of things you get done. Explore a number of techniques; work for an hour and rest for ten minutes, or work for three hours and rest for half an hour, there are many ways to go about it — find what works for you.

4. Stay social

Even in my own personal experience, remote work has often gotten me glued to the computer screen for many days in a row. I get paid by delivering flat results, which means it can sometimes feel quite appealing to just sit and work all the time, knowing that I’m going to get paid for it. But, that can have its drawbacks.

Sitting in your chair all day, going back and forth from the office to the toilet to the kitchen can create fairly unwelcome mind states, and one should work hard towards making a schedule that includes outside time, whether with friends or family, or by yourself — hiking, getting that breath of fresh air.

5. Be disciplined

Yes, that sounds much more easy than it is to actually do it. One of the hardest things to face when doing remote work is the fact that your family might look at it rather not seriously, and even bother you at times when you should be doing actual work. This is where we have to become disciplined and set solid boundaries, this also applies to the idea of finishing work at a certain time and shutting the door for the day, otherwise we can just end up working late hours without even realizing that we’re punishing ourselves.

6. Get fit and stay that way

Exercise is your best friend when it comes to work. It helps to keep your mood elevated, stress at its minimum, and you also feel much better about yourself and the life experience that you’re having. Being stuck at the desk at your home all day can feel very draining and often discouraging, and it’s a known fact that to deal with those types of emotions and behavior — it’s best that we get some exercise in. You should remember to do the kind of exercise that you feel good about, that way you will want to do it again, and again.

7. Is remote work for you?

We will only really understand what it is like to work remotely, after we will have done it for at least a few months. It can be devastating to realize that we’re not actually happy with the way things are going, and that we would much rather work in a physical location. One of the ways to battle this is by finding a separate office location that you can use to work from, but you can also practice doing remote work with freelance jobs to get a feel of it, and that might help making the final decision.

I am the Editor-in-Chief here at CodeCondo, and I'm always available for a good discussion. Wink wink! My content ideas stem from the demand of the community, and the growth of the industry. I also write my own blog at SkillCode.